Entry number 2,019. In the year 2019. Crazy. This entry will never happen again.
Well, I mean, obviously this entry will never happen again because we’re not repeating numbers here 😛 But, I mean, it will never happen again where my entry number lines up with the year it is.
So…this is special.
Liz and I saved a baby hummingbird today. It had fallen from its nest yesterday, and we tried to put it back, but he/she fell again and I thought someone took he/she into their apartment, because I couldn’t see them or hear them when I went out to check.
Well, I heard her…we’re just going to call the baby “her”…this morning. She was on the ground, chirping away, very much alive, and lifting her head with beak open, saying she was hungry.
I read conflicting advice on what to do. Some advice was that this meant she was a fledgling, and to leave her alone. Mom was feeding her on the ground as she got big enough to fly. But, her wings didn’t look right, and she wasn’t hopping around or flapping like a fledgling was supposed to.
Other advice was to put her back into the nest immediately, and even to feed her some sugar water.
So…we did that. I donned a pair of gloves and lifted her very gently back up into her nest with her sibling when mom wasn’t around, then fed her sugar water from a syringe. Oh, did she loooove that. Then Liz fed her too while I was getting my haircut. And…I’m happy to say, it seems to have worked! I just checked the nest, and I’m pretty sure I counted all three of them in there together, breathing all fast like hummingbirds do, eyes open, beaks out.
On the downside…we had a swarm of bees come into our courtyard today, and while we were figuring out what to do about them–ie: were there any bee removal companies that could come same-day and re-locate them–our gardener took matters into his own hands and sprayed them down with water. So, they died. Sigh.
It was a small swarm, but still. They were just looking for a new home, and the flowers we just planted in our courtyard caught their attention. I don’t know if they would have tried to set up shop here (which definitely wouldn’t have worked), or if they would have continued on to find a home somewhere else, but it was actually quite hard to see them meet their end here.
Weird day. Therapy was good, but it was mostly just me realizing that my relationship with writing has tapped into a big fear that I don’t really understand…and that’s scary and frustrating. And I think it’s going to take some time to really unravel.
Coco is pressed up against me, and it’s midnight.
Time for sleeps.